Robert Wilson - A Small Death in Lisbon

The girl returned with bread, cured ham, cheese and chouriço. She laid a knife in front of Abrantes. The girl's face was very young, her eyes light-coloured, blue or green, it was difficult to say in the yellow oily light. A strand of blonde hair hung down from her headscarf. She was prettier than anything Felsen had seen since leaving Lisbon, but young, no older than fifteen, but strangely, with the body, the full form, of a grown woman.

Abrantes watched the German looking at the girl. He moved the ham in front of him and handed him the bread and knife. He ate. The ham was perfectly sweet.

'Bolotas ,' said Abrantes, acorns. 'They make the meat sweet, don't you think?'

'I haven't seen many oak trees around here. It's all broom and pine.'

'They have them away from the mountains. I bring them up here. I have the sweetest pigs in the Beira.'

They ate and drank more. The chouriço was lumpy with chunks of fat. The cheese soft, sharp and salty.

'I heard you were coming to see me,' said Abrantes.

'I don't know how.'

'News gets through to us up here. We've even heard about your war.'

'So you know why I'm here.'

'To investigate murder,' said Abrantes, his shoulders shaking, metal chinking in his jacket. The man laughing.

'Murder interests me, that's true.'

'I don't know why you should be interested in the death of a few Portuguese peasants.'

'And the GNR officer.'

'That was an accident. He fell off his horse. These things happen on difficult terrain,' said Abrantes. 'And anyway, what's interesting? Isn't there enough killing in your war to keep you occupied without having to come to the Beira?'

'It's interesting because it means that someone is controlling the situation.'

'And this is a situation you would, perhaps, like to control yourself.'

'This is your country, Senhor Abrantes. They are your people.'

The glasses were refilled. Felsen offered a cigarette. Abrantes refused, not ready to accept anything yet. Felsen admired the psychology.

'Senhor Abrantes,' said Felsen. 'I'm going to make you a very rich man.'

Joaquim Abrantes turned his glass on the wooden table as if he was screwing it in. He didn't respond. Maybe he'd heard it before.

'You and I, Senhor Abrantes, are going to corner the market in every scrap of uncontracted wolfram in this area.'

'Why should I work with you when I do very well myself and… if you can make me rich, can't the British do the same? Perhaps I'd prefer to play the market. It has only one direction as far as I can see.'

'The British will never be in the market for as much tonnage as us.'

'They still buy. They buy to close you out.'

'What do you think of the wolfram price now?' asked Felsen.

'It is high.'

'Are you buying?'

Abrantes rearranged himself in his seat.

'I have stocks,' he said. 'The price is going up.'

'If, as you say, the wolfram price has one direction, then you're going to sell high to buy higher… that is, if you want to stay in the market.'

Abrantes' darker eye, the one away from the light, looked over the granite ridge of his nose.

'What are you proposing Senhor Felsen?'

'I'm proposing to increase your capacity to trade wolfram for my account.'

'You have the money, I have no doubt, but do you have any idea how you can do it?'

'Perhaps you know the country better than I do.'

Abrantes thumbed a lump of bread and cheese into his mouth and swilled it back with the aguardente.

'A lot of the wolfram that's brought to me is not pure,' he said. 'There's always quartz and pyrites in it. If we set up companies to clean the wolfram we will attract more of the mineral and guarantee the quality.'

Felsen nodded.

'I'd want financial control,' said Abrantes. 'I don't want to have to ask permission for every rock I buy and I'd want a share of the profits and if there are no profits a guaranteed percentage of the turnover.'

'How much?'

'Fifteen percent.'

Felsen stood and went towards the door.

'You might be able to make that on your own account with small volume but I can't offer anywhere near that for the volumes I'm talking about.'

'What are these volumes?'

'Thousands rather than hundreds of kilos.'

The Portuguese balanced that in his head.

'If I go with you I'm out of the market…'

'I'm not stopping you from trading for your own account.'

'How long will you be in the market? I have no guarantee that you'll…'

'Senhor Abrantes. This war… this war that we need all this wolfram for, will change everything. Do you know what's happening in Europe? Germany controls everything from Scandinavia to North Africa, from France to Russia. The British are finished. Germany will control the economy of Europe and, if you work with me, you will be a friend of Germany. So to answer your question, Senhor Abrantes, we will be in the market for your lifetime, the lifetime of your children and theirs and more.'

'Ten percent.'

'That's not a percentage that the business can bear,' said Felsen and reached for the door.

'Seven.'

'I don't think you understand where this business is going, Senhor Abrantes. If you did, you'd know that a single percent would make you the richest man in the Beira.'

'Come, sit down,' he said. 'We can discuss this. We must eat. You must know how important it is for us to eat by now.'

'I know it,' said Felsen and sat down.

The girl brought in a thick stew of pork, liver and black pudding. She put more bread on the table and a jug of red wine. The two men ate alone. Abrantes told Felsen the dish was called Sarrabulho and that it was the best thing the girl had learnt from her mother.

Joaquim Abrantes might have been a peasant once but he wasn't one any more. This didn't mean, as Felsen found out during their discussion towards an agreement on volumes and percentages, that he could read or write. It meant that his father had farmed land and between them they'd acquired more. He had the house which was joined to two others at the back and to the side. They had livestock. He appreciated good food and drink. He had his young wife. He was a strange brute. On the few occasions that their eyes met, Felsen had the same feeling as he did looking into a bull's head. There was something big, private and planetary going on inside the man's brain. He understood surprising things about business and numbers but had no concept of maps or distances unless he'd travelled them. He had an instinct for power. He didn't like anybody except his old, half-blind father. Women did not speak to him.

After lunch he excused himself. Felsen stood and stretched. Through the double doors he saw into a parlour where the mother was crocheting and beyond that into the kitchen. Abrantes was standing behind the girl who was leaning with both hands on the table. He had his hand up her skirt. He straightened the front of his trousers and looked down as if he might mount her there and then. He thought better of it and went outside and down the back stairs.

Felsen was sweating at his small table by the shuttered window in the airless restaurant, which had fans but not working ones. The shutters kept out the devastating heat, which blasted off the cobbles and stone façades of the buildings, but did not improve the stuffiness in the room. The restaurant contained fifteen men split between two tables near the door, and him alone at the other end. The men were loud, volframistas, with too much money from their mineral finds and too much brandy in their guts. They all had chapéus ricos, which were the same as poor man's hats but more expensive and they all had pens in their jacket breast pockets even though they were illiterate to a man. The restaurant had been quiet enough until they'd run out of the best wine in the house and the volframistas had taken to drinking brandy in the same quantity as wine. Their rivals on the next table matched them bottle for bottle. The insults were piling high, like washing-up in the sink, and they were threatening to soak blood into the bare, rough wooden floors.